Born And Bred
by Princess Pinky
Summary: Jenny never thought anyone could understand what it's like to be born and bred as a weapon, but perhaps there is someone out there who does, so much closer than she thinks.


**A/N: **I've been working on this story for so long. I can't believe it's finally finished. I'd work on it, shelve it, and then get it back out. The last few days though I really hit a high with it and it seems to have gotten pretty good reception on after a snippet I posted on another site the other day, so here's the full story. Enjoy!

_**Born And Bred**_

The shafts were smaller than anticipated, three inches smaller in fact. That was unfortunate. If she'd realized, she would've brought less bulky guns. As it was, they kept catching on the shafts and she'd have to stop and reassess her position. It was costing her valuable time and she only had a very select window in which to complete her mission.

"Oh, you're good. You're _very_ good."

Jenny froze faster than a quantum lock. Her eyes moved fluidly back and forth, looking for the source of the voice. No one had been behind her, otherwise she would have seen them, or heard them at the very least. There was also nobody within her direct line of vision, which meant of several things, but the immediate possibilities that came to mind were: one, the voice belonged to someone who was packing cloaking technology or two, there was someone down a turn in the shaft and that someone knew she was there.

"Well don't let me hold you up, I'm sure time is of the essence."

"Who are you?" Jenny lifted one leather gloved palm and set it in front of her, silently. "_Where _are you?"

"About ten meters down, there's a cross-shaft. Take a right."

"Why would you tell me that?"

"You were speaking rhetorically then? Well, do carry on."

Jenny lifted her left palm and pressed it to her waist, feeling the handle of her gun. Her eyes shifted to the far reaches of their sockets in sheer contemplation, then she began to move again; slow, steady, listening for any movement or sign of attack. There was none. Finally, the edges of the cross shaft came into view, and Jenny noiselessly removed one gun from its holster and adjusted it between her gloved hands. In a swish of blonde hair, she jerked around the corner, gun aimed and ready, only to find an equally large gun pointed at her nose.

"You_ are_ impressive," the woman, donned in a black cat suit and holding the gun, mused. The mass of her blonde curls practically filled half of the shaft. "I do love a woman who knows how to aim her gun."

"Who are you?" Jenny demanded.

The woman continued to hold the gun at Jenny's nose as a smile blossomed on her lips, as though she might lean right in and kiss the barrel of the gun that was being held to her own face. "The name's River Song," she laughed. Suddenly she returned her weapon to her holster and turned away from Jenny to fiddle with something that was stationed behind her.

Jenny drew a blank for roughly five seconds, something that had _never_ happened to her before. When you were at a draw with someone, it wasn't common practice of warfare to laugh and turn away. But as long as they were on River's terms, Jenny chose to follow suit, and withdrew her weapon as well. "Jenny."

"Lovely to meet you, Jenny," River replied without turning around.

"Who are you working for?"

"Who?" River chuckled. "Oh no, I don't do that anymore."

"Then how did you know I was here?"

"You misunderstand, I'm not here for you, you being here just happens to be an entertaining coincidence." River pushed a swathe of unruly curls away so she could look properly look at Jenny. "I merely knew you were here because I_ heard_ you coming. Miscalculated the shaft parameters I suspect?" She patted her holster like she was praising the head of a dog. Without waiting for Jenny to answer she continued, "Then you must have hacked the Brimborian data core to get the information and if you did that, therein lies your problem."

"How so?"

River narrowed her eyes. "Let's just say an associate and I had a little _rift_ and he ended up infecting their network with a virus at my expense. Nothing dangerous to them, mind you, a minor annoyance that might take a few weeks to correct at worse, but he knew I wouldn't be happy by the time I realized what had occurred."

"So what are you here for then? Sneaking around in ventilation shafts, that is?"

"That's a good question, Jenny." River wagged her finger approvingly. "I need to _borrow_ something."

"In a _ventilation shaft_?"

"Yep!" River winked. "And you?"

Jenny sighed. "A rescue mission."

"In a ventilation shaft?" River smirked.

Jenny scowled. "You don't understand: there is an underground Ood trade on this planet and nobody's willing to put a stop to it!"

River picked up an electronic device about the size of a prime cut of steak and began to enter codes into it. "How very noble of you."

"I'm not doing it for glory, I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do!" Jenny shook her head. "Those Ood are being born and bred for slavery and no one sheds a tear if they die, just as long as they die serving their creator's purpose. They're not even allowed to think for themselves, they're just born and raised to do what they're told. That's – that's –"

"_Despicable."_

"Yes." Jenny cocked her head at the tonal shift in River's voice and body language, very subtle, almost imperceptible.

"Ood are a bit like children," River said, softer than before. She didn't raise her head to look at Jenny. "Soft, malleable. It's easier to steal them and get inside their heads; turn them into something that they don't want to become."

"It's almost as if you know a little something about that, Ms. Song."

River never smiled; never looked up. "Tell me, Jenny, why are you so interested in helping the Ood?"

Jenny moved her hand to her holster and gingerly traced the contours with her fingers. "I know what it's like," she said uncharacteristically quietly, "to be born and bred to_ die_."

River finally lifted her head. Her smirk was gone and her eyes were suddenly so, so deep, like the vortexes stretching straight into time itself. "You're a weapon."

Images embraced her mind like a shock of static electricity: stepping from the progenation machine, be handed a gun almost the length of her arm span, and knowing instantly what her purpose in life was."_No._ That's what they said I was; what they _wanted_ me to be. I know better now."

"But you still carry a gun like it's second nature."

"It is. _Second_ nature, that is. Guns are useful, but they don't have to kill. I know that now." She looked at the gun in River's holster. "Do you?"

"I know that sometimes violence makes you who you are. Not all of us have a choice in the matter."

"There's always a choice."

"Is there?" There was a sudden gleam in her eye. "Time's wasting!" She shoved the device she was holding into a slot secured to her thigh and retrieved another device, resembling a gun of sorts, which she aimed at the floor of the shaft between her and Jenny. As soon as she'd fired it, a large square hole appeared. River was down the hole like Alice into Wonderland and by the time her feet hit the floor, the device she'd used to create the hole had been exchanged for the gun which Jenny had originally found aimed at her face. River tilted her head up and winked. "You coming?"

Jenny grabbed the gun from her holster and jumped out of the shaft, landing on her feet, back-to-back with the fellow blonde. Although she couldn't see River with her back to her, she could feel the way their shoulder blades, backs, arms, and legs aligned as one. It almost seemed a meticulously practiced military maneuver. As red alarm lights flared and guards rushed in, she moved in a sweeping circle, simultaneously taking in a complete mental assessment of the room.

In the years she'd been exploring the sixty-first century since leaving Messaline, she had quickly come to realize that a Time Lord's brain didn't work the same way that a human's – or any other life form's for that matter – brain did. That was unfortunate, because in the few moments that it had taken Jenny to take a mental image of the room and play a host of strategies out in her mind, she had realized that if the glass that encased the purple Brimborian orb – an energy device used in all public buildings to condition the atmosphere on the planet Brimbore to breathable levels – was shot and then the orb itself shot, she could create an implosion that would fill the room in a smoke cover, allowing just enough time for escape without taking a single life.

However, there were two problems: the first being that she had no way to communicate such a plan to River without also informing the heavily armed guards, the second was that even if she could it was unlikely River would understand the mechanics of the plan, and lastly was that even if the first two issues didn't pose a problem, River would need to be a near perfect shot in order to time such an attack in the precise synchronicity that they'd need to pull it off. Given the way that River had managed her gun in the shaft, she might – _might_ – be a good enough shot, but the other two problems still held.

"One-hundred-eleven-and-a-half degrees northwest, three point two second puncture lag," River announced.

River's words momentarily took Jenny off guard until she realized that she was spewing coordinates: specifically, coordinates for the Brimborian orb's box. Then, she realized with a sudden elevated beat of her hearts, River was telling her exactly how long it would take between gunshots for them to escape. For the first time in her life, Jenny's mind reeled and was she dying to know how River had been able to come to the same conclusion. Apart from her father, she'd never met another person with a mind who worked as ferociously as her own and for a half a second, she wondered if River could also be a Time Lady, only to deftly remember that her father had said they were all gone; she, herself, only an echo of what had been.

Jenny felt River's elbow gently rib her and she returned the gesture and immediately followed it up by aiming and firing. Three point five seconds later, she heard the blast of River's gun follow her own. The glass box exploded in a shower of shards and River's gunshot flew seamlessly through them, impaling the heart of the orb. It crackled, like water hitting a live wire, and a mushroom cloud of violet smoke heaved from the orb. In the midst of the purple haze, Jenny felt River's hand slide into her own and tug. Instantly, her feet felt compelled to move. Usually she ran alone, but as she ran hand-in-hand with River, a familiar yearning returned to her hearts: the elusive exhilaration that came in running _with_ someone, the companionship of the act.

"I'm almost sorry we got away!" Jenny beamed once they had escaped into an elevator that was heading down.

"And why's that?" River grinned, running the device over the control panel on the elevator button.

"You're a good runner."

"You're not so bad yourself." She suddenly ripped the panel off the wall and the elevator came to a dead halt. In an almost motherly fashion, she pushed Jenny back against the wall and aimed the strange gun that had cut the square hole in the shaft at the floor of the elevator. With one fire, an identical hole appeared in the floor, which unveiled a long, dark drop down and an irksome draft. She held the device out to Jenny.

"What is this?"

"Squareness gun. I'm sure it'll come in handy."

"And you're just _giving_ it to me?"

"I trust you'll take care of her. And anyway, it'll lighten my load."

"And where are you going?"

The older blonde wiggled her finger in front of her face, reeling in the younger blonde like a fish on a hook. Once they were nose to nose, River's eyes glinted. "To finish what you started." Without warning, River's hands landed roughly around Jenny's hips and she shoved her over the edge of the square hole, sprawling into the frigid darkness of the shaft.

Jenny felt her arms and legs splaying out around her, but no matter what she did, she only seemed to fall faster. She cursed herself for having let her guard down and now she was going to die. Or maybe not. She still had no idea what had brought her back to life the last time. But now, in all likelihood, she was going to die, and without ever having seen her father again.

Then she landed. Not against something hard, but with a _splash! _Chlorine water rolled into her mouth and nose, burning as it reached her throat. Once she realized, however, she began to pump her arms and legs, surging up and up and up, hoping to breech the surface and still not understanding what on Messaline had just happened. _That_ was a new feeling. Then, just like that, she could breathe again!

"Seriously, River?"

The voice, combined with the acoustics of wherever she had landed, were almost too much. She was still floundering in the water, trying to get her bearings, when she felt two hands grab her by the shoulders and haul her sopping form from the water.

"An elevator!" the slightly manic voice continued to rant. "An ele – _Jenny?_"

Jenny rolled over and spat out a mouthful of chlorinated water, coughed a few times, then sat up and took in the gawky limbed little man with floppy chestnut hair, a tweed jacket, and a red bowtie. He didn't look a thing like her father, but once she'd laid eyes on his face, she knew him instantaneously: _"Dad?"_

The Doctor fell to knees in his knees, simultaneously removing a metal device from his sleeve and waving it up and down her form. It buzzed and a green node caught her eye like a button that she shouldn't press. When he stopped, there was a look she couldn't accurately describe on his face, then he pressed one hand to the left of her chest, and then his other to her right. "It's – it's _you!_"

"You've changed," she observed. "You don't look much older than I do."

"But _how?_"

"You tell me!"

"No!" he yelped. "How did you survive? How are you here? And – and where's River? She gave me these coordinates –"

"River Song?"

"Yes!"

"She pushed me into an elevator shaft," Jenny explained as if it was an everyday occurrence. "She said, well, she said she was going to finish what I'd started. I assume she meant she was going to free the Ood, that's what I was going to do." She fingered his bowtie, taking in how starkly different he dressed since she'd last seen him. "I've been looking for you for so long, Dad. How did you find me?"

"River," The Doctor choked. "I always catch her."

"Catch her?"

"Yes. She left me a message and –" He suddenly waved his hand. "No! That's not important right now." He pulled them up off the floor and tugged Jenny along. "You need a towel!" he observed as he lead her over to a string of poolside chairs, each decorated with a neatly folded blue terry cloth towels. He wrapped one around her and promptly sat her down. "I don't understand, this is impossible! You died!"

"And then I came back."

"But you didn't regenerate."

"Do you remember anything?" he asked. He pulled a tongue depressor from his inner jacket pocket and tapped her lips before sliding it into her mouth.

"_Numhuh,"_ Jenny mumbled with her tongue pressed to the bottom of her mouth.

"Nothing at all?"

Jenny shook her head and watched as her dad carelessly tossed the depressor aside and then tilted her head back and proceeded to look up her nose. "I remember everything going black….I remember…your face. Your old face, you were so sad, and then – then darkness. I just fell asleep. And when I woke up, I felt a breath rush out of me and I felt as alive as ever, but you and Donna had already gone."

"A breath?" he repeated incredulously. Then he hopped to his feet and clasped his hands together. "Oh!" he beamed. _"A breath!"_

"What's so special about that?"

"Don't you see how cool this is?" he squealed. "Dumb, thick old Doctor!" He thumped his palm against his forehead for his stupidity. "You'd been alive for a few hours at best! You must have still been impervious!"

"Impervious?"

"Yes! Oh, yes, of course!" He bounded over to her and sat down on the edge of the poolside chair across from her. "Here," he said softly, "let me show you…" The Doctor lightly pressed his fingertips to Jenny's temples and closed his eyes.

Jenny felt her mind opening, like a whole other universe inside her head. A series of images rushed in like a waterfall, but she didn't have time to digest them all before one particular image claimed dominance, swelling and growing until it filled her mind's eye completely.

_Metal against metal. Sword against sword. The clanks of weaponry reverberated like gun shots in her head. Then she saw her father's face. The face she recognized, of the man who had held her as she'd died in his arms. He wore striped pajamas and in a flash, he'd fallen to a ledge and in a single swish of metal, his hand was severed from his body, and it along with the sword it had been holding went pummeling towards the ground the way she had fallen in the elevator shaft. _

"_You cut my hand off," he said, and he rose as the creature he'd been dualing lifted his arms and cried victoriously. "And now I know what sort of man I am. I'm lucky! Because quite by chance, I'm still within the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle, which means I've got just enough residual cellular energy to do this…" He lifted his stubby arm and a sparkle of greenish-cold light wafted up from the sleeve, followed by the spontaneous reformation of a brand new hand._

"_Witchcraft!"_

"_Time Lord!"_

"Do you understand now?" The Doctor asked, once he'd broken the psychic link.

Jenny half nodded. "Yes, but I didn't regenerate."

"No, but you were _pro_generated! From _my_ genes! The genes of a Time Lord! Don't you get it? You weren't born, you were spontaneously grown into a full fledged adulthood! You may have looked done on the outside, but you were still cooking! The machine was programmed for human and Hath, not Time Lords. That must be why there was a delay in your ability to repair yourself, the same way the other me was struggling to cope with our past regenerations!"

"The other you?"

"The Ganger Me, but I really don't like to use that word," he said, shaking his head. "It makes me sound not me."

Jenny nodded, even though she still wasn't sure what a ganger was.

"The point is: you're alive! You're alive and you're a Time Lord and you're in my TARDIS!" He began to jump around like a child with a sugar high, manically waving his floppy limbs and making inhuman noises. "I have a daughter! This is _so cool!_"

"Cool," Jenny smiled. "I like that word."

"Of course you do," he deadpanned. "You're my daughter!" He suddenly flopped down beside her and wrapped his arms around her ecstatically. "And you're never leaving the TARDIS again! Not without me by your side. Or River." He stopped and got up. "Wait, you said River went to free the Ood?"

"That's what she alluded to."

"How long have you known River?"

"I haven't, we'd just met in the shaft."

The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. "And what, exactly, did she say to you?"

"It's a bit of a long story," Jenny said slowly, "but the first thing she said was…that I was, well, 'good.'"

"Good?"

"'Very good,' in fact."

"Very good," The Doctor mused, suddenly pacing by the poolside. "Oh, what is she up to? Oh, this is _so_ her!" he grumbled. "This has just got Rivery wivery written _all_ over it!"

**DW DW DW DW**

River ascended the TARDIS pool and made her way towards the pool chairs and towels, where Jenny was already waiting for her. She studied her fellow blonde as she sat down across from her, smiled, and proceeded to dry herself off.

"Thank Rassilon you're here!" she ranted. "He's being entirely unreasonable! You'll talk to him, make him understand why I have to do this? If he wanted to put one of his lives on the line, there wouldn't be an issue! But _me_? Well, I've got eleven more lives left than he does, but that doesn't seem to matter! He's way out of line!"

River tilted her head to the side, allowing the water in her ears to dribble out onto her towel. When she sensed that Jenny was finally finished, she smiled sympathetically. "You're Jenny, aren't you?"

Jenny blinked. "Yes, of course I'm – _oh._"

"Yes. I'm afraid so. You're quick, you're good."

"We haven't met yet."

"_Very_ good."

Jenny crossed her legs awkwardly. "I've known you for three years, give or take…it's hard to judge with time travel," she said quietly.

River held out her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Jenny. The Doctor's told me about you…once. But I've heard more from the TARDIS."

"How much more?"

"That were you were born on a planet called Messaline in the sixty-first century and that a paradox brought The Doctor to you and you to him." At Jenny's nod, River continued, "I guess that means we have a few things in common."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm a paradox too," she laughed. "Did I ever tell you that my parents named me after myself?"

"Not until just now." Jenny looked to her lap. "But since you're in a sharing mood, there is something I'd like to ask."

"Oh?"

"When I first met you-"

"Spoilers!"

"No, I know!" Jenny interrupted, but held up her hands pleadingly. "But please, hear me out." When River nodded, she continued, "When I first met you, you said something that's always stuck with me: you told me that Ood are like children because their minds are easily manipulated. And later I found out you were a perfect shot. Now I know that Time Lords have agility and strength unparallel to humans and most species, but you – you were different, like years of training had been burned into her mind." Jenny looked her step-mother in the eyes. "Forgive me for asking this, but: is there any truth to that?"

River was silent for a long time, then she turned her head to face the calm of the pool. "I don't like to revisit my childhood," she said finally. The acoustics made the words echo. "Do you know who Melody Pond is, Jenny?"

"Melody Pond?" Jenny repeated. "Is she related to Amy?"

"Yes. _I'm_ Melody Pond. Or I was. But I consider Melody to have died, on the eve of war in Berlin. That's the day River Song was born."

"I don't understand."

"When I was a month old, I was kidnapped, never to be returned to my parents, and I was raised for one purpose: to kill The Doctor…to kill your father." She looked Jenny in the eyes. "And I succeeded. Where so many had failed, _I_ succeeded, truly and properly. For over a half a century, I was brainwashed to believe that he needed to die and I was primed in every way to make that happen. So, to answer your question, yes: years of training had been burned into my mind. I was the perfect weapon."

"And that's why you're always in the Stormcage, for his murder?"

"Yes."

Jenny wrapped her arms around her waist. "I never thought anyone understood."

"Understood what?"

"How it feels," she whispered. "To be created for the sole purpose of killing and winning and dying for your trouble. I wasn't the only one, there were the human and Hath who came from the machine too, but it feels different. I wasn't like them; they weren't Time Lords. _You are._ It's not the same, exactly, but in a way, it is. That's why I had to stop the Ood trade; to save them."

River lifted her hand. "No more. No more spoilers." She moved from her seat to sit beside her step-daughter. River gingerly wrapped an arm around the younger blonde's shoulders and pulled her into the crook of her body. "I _do_ understand, Jenny. From the earliest memories I have, I remember training and violence and weapons and tests until I thought my body would collapse from exhaustion. That was when they put me into the suit, because I was too weak, and then it turned into the mental torture in the orphanage until one day I just knew I had to escape or else I'd die. And I did, for a while, but they caught up with me again."

Jenny wiped her wet cheek with the back of her hand. "How did Melody die?"

River rested her chin atop Jenny's head and loosely stroked her hair. "The Doctor. Humans have this old saying, 'Seeing is believing.' And I saw The Doctor clearly for the first time that day. He changed my life with seven little words."

"What words?"

River leaned her mouth close to Jenny's ear and repeated the words The Doctor had told her that day on the steps in Berlin. She used her thumb to wipe away the tears on Jenny's cheeks.

"He changed my life too. By telling me that I had a choice."

River nodded. "Your father's a good man. Not a perfect not, not by any stretch of the imagination. He's done some terrible things and he's been as much as warrior as you or I. He likes to believe he is the man who never would because he's the man who already has. Sometimes, he still does the wrong thing. He lies and he makes choices according to his view of the universe, which may or may not be the right ones. But when he can, he tries to give everyone the choice he believes his people denied him: the choice to not kill, the choice for everyone to live. Don't get an idealized view of him, Jenny. The more you know him, the more he won't make sense, and the more he may even seem like a hypocrite. But I think, in the end, we all are. In the end, it doesn't matter who we were born to be, it matters who we choose to be, and who we _try_ to be."

"I think we're all compiled of good things and bad things. The good things don't necessarily make up for the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them useless."

"You sound more like him every day." River untangled herself from Jenny. "Now, about that thing you wanted me to talk to him about…why don't you go to the control room and I'll meet you up there to discuss it in a minute? I still need to change."

Jenny stood up and dusted herself off, realizing that she was semi-wet too. "Thank you…Mum."

"Always." River watched her step-daughter depart and then rose and moved to a telephone stationed on the far wall. She lifted the receiver and dialed quickly.

"River Song! Well I _never!_"

A cheeky smile bloomed on her lips. "Hello, Captain," she said smoothly. "I have a proposition for you."

"If you bring your big gun, I'll bring mine…"

River laughed airily. "What can you tell me about underground Ood trades?"

"Depends on what you'd like to know: take your pick."

"That's exactly what I intend on doing…"


End file.
